WBAI-FM Radio Celebrates “Courting Mae West”

Actress LOUISE ["Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman"] LASSER has fond memories of Manhattan’s trolley cars and elevated trains. “As a child I lived on the East Side, and my father used to take me on the Third Avenue El. You’d be high up, where you could peek in windows and picture life from a new angle. In this privileged position, you could watch things that pedestrians couldn’t see.” Lasser visited WBAI’s studios on Wall Street last weekend just to watch something listeners won’t see. It was a taping of dramatic scenes from “Courting Mae West,” a play based on true events during the 1920s when the Sixth Avenue El and trolleys were part of life. WBAI will air these episodes on Arts Magazine and as part of Women’s History Month.

During the Roaring 20s, only a few people had a privileged insider’s view into the judicial proceedings at Jefferson Market Court and Jail. MAE WEST, TEXAS GUINAN, and JIM TIMONY were on trial there many times during 1927 and 1928. Much of this was unjust and politically motivated. By listening to WBAI in the coming weeks, you can picture Mae’s legal woes from a new angle. Find out why LOUISE LASSER has become a “Courting Mae West” fan.


MAE WEST: Noreen Foster [member of AFTRA]
As "Courting Mae West" gears up for a workshop production in midtown Manhattan, Noreen Foster, a native New Yorker, is reconsidering the finer points of a Brooklyn accent. For over a year, Diamond Lil's corsets, silk lingerie, baubles, and gravity-challenging hats were double-parked in a closet as Miss Foster went traveling with the First National Tour of "Menopause - the Musical." As MAE WEST, Noreen Foster will rejoin the entire cast in “Courting Mae West,” set in New York City during 1926-1929 and written by playwright LindaAnn Loschiavo. It’s the most entertaining way to discover Roaring 20s history.
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TEXAS GUINAN: Courtney Gable [member of AEA]
For a February 9, 2005 Staged Reading of "Courting Mae West," actress Courtney Gable stepped into the gem-studded cowgirl boots of the millionaire speakeasy hostess Texas Guinan [1884-1933] and won many hearts east of the Rio Grande. At home even in a Greenwich Village Jail - - "the only place where my jewelry feels safe" - - Texas offers wise witty words to Mae West on October 2, 1928 before a police raid at the Biltmore Theatre. As multi-faceted as a diamond, Courtney Gable has distinguished herself as the Fight Mistress who added poetry in motion to Nicu's Spoon production of "SubUrbia," which won an OOBR [2004].
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JIM TIMONY: Michael Citriniti [member of AEA]
For a February 7, 2004 reading in the original courtroom where Mae West was on trial in 1927 as well as the February 9, 2005 Staged Reading of "Courting Mae West," actor Michael Citriniti's superb Irish brogue lent a raffish charm to the lovable scoundrel DECLAN ROURKE. The brogue's in vogue during the week of St. Patrick when Citriniti takes on another Irishman: James A. Timony, Mae's rosary-bead-slinging lawyer/ manager. When Timony (like Mae) was sent to prison in April 1927, his leadership ability was noted by the warden, who put him in charge of the toilet-cleaning brigade. Citriniti has abandoned his Gaelic accent to play a galactic gigolo, an alien, and various alienated gentlemen in theatrical projects in addition to work in TV, radio, film.

Arts Magazine - Tuesdays, 2:00-3:00 p.m. Prairie Miller, host
WBAI’s Arts Magazine is a vibrant weekly mix of cultural news, views and interviews, dramatic readings, and the organic and intricate ways that art always intertwines and fuses dynamically with political currents of the day.

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